Weighted or Unweighted, MMSD Earns an “F” in Transparency
The district ignored survey support for weighted GPAs, raising fairness questions under Wisconsin Guarantee
Thank you for taking the time to read this piece. It is the accumulation of several months of emails to district leaders and school board members, analysis of local news coverage, and personal concerns over how MMSD makes decisions and how, in my personal opinion, they made the wrong one here. This article was also published in the Memorial Sword & Shield today, where it can be found here.
I apologize for the lack of content lately, as my summer was incredibly busy with work and college visits/applications. I hope to post the Big Eight football ratings (although late) soon, and write more with my lighter schedule this year once applications are done. Again, thank you for reading, this topic is an important one for me, and I hope you learn something even if you disagree with my view.
This spring, MMSD launched an ‘extensive’ review of GPA calculation to decide whether to switch from unweighted to weighted grades.
In an unweighted system, all classes count the same. A student taking two APs and one honors class who earns Bs in APs and As elsewhere has a 3.71 GPA. A common strategy for weighting caps regular classes at 4.0, honors 4.5, AP/college-level 5.0, meaning that that same student would have a 3.71 unweighted GPA, but a 4.0 weighted GPA. This is because an A in an AP is a 5.0, a B is a 4.0, and a B in an honors course would be a 3.5, and so on.
I have two main issues to talk about. First, the decision was wrong, and second, MMSD’s “review” lacked honesty. The second matters more - even if I may disagree with the outcome, that would be easier to accept if there was a genuine review where public input was considered, but they did not.
The Decision Itself
The district chose not to adjust GPAs, a choice many students and families view as unfair. But I need to explain how this whole conversation started. In 2024, Wisconsin Act 95 was enacted, with the goal of boosting in-state admissions to the UW-Madison, UW-Eau Claire, and UW-La Crosse. It is not the same as the new Direct Admit system, which is much more broad, and has lower standards for automatic admission to all of the smaller Universities of Wisconsin schools. Act 95 created the Wisconsin Guarantee, wherein the top 5% and top 10% of each high school class from around the state gain automatic admission to Madison (5%), and La Crosse & Eau Claire (10%). The legislation has drawn criticism as critical implementation details were overlooked, but MMSD exacerbated that by failing to respond.
Defenders argue advanced students will ‘get in anyway,’ but inequity remains fundamentally wrong. What happens in an unweighted GPA system with Act 95 is that a student who takes zero honors or AP courses in their entire high school career and gets all As will have a 4.0 GPA, putting them in the top 5% and earning automatic admission. But a student who takes twelve APs (sometimes more) and gets a single B will not get that same recognition. Even students outside a weighted top 5–10%, likely myself included, notice the inequity. The point is that it should not be possible for students to simply coast, whether intentionally or not, through four years of high school and gain admission without any review process to a prestigious state university, while someone who goes above and beyond in rigor and gets one “imperfect” semester grade does not. Throughout all of the correspondence I have had with the district, and their public-facing statements, they have simply refused to acknowledge that fact.
Concerns remain that weighted GPAs may push students into unsuitable courses or reduce arts participation. Those both certainly could be true, and I won’t pretend otherwise. However, Act 95 allows for the school districts to determine a class ranking based solely on GPA, and there is nothing stopping MMSD from simply creating that ranking based on a weighted system, even if that is hidden on transcripts, and still using the unweighted system for everything else. The only thing that would be impacted is the Guarantee, as MMSD themselves concede, as UW and every other schoolweight grades themselves, and have their own systems for doing so.
A Lack of Transparency & Honesty
When it was first announced that this review was taking place, the district said it was working with college representatives to learn how they use weighted grades in admissions. We were told district leaders would make a recommendation by this summer. At the time, MMSD Spokesperson Ian Folger said that “those recommendations could include maintaining current practice”. Everything suggests that the outcome was predetermined.
On August 22nd, the district’s Executive Director of College, Career & Community Readiness, Mary Jankovich, signed an email sent out to families saying that the final decision was to stick with unweighted GPAs, without any specific details on what led to the decision. The district simply listed the following factors that “the review process included”:
Analyzing the 2025 Weighted Grades Survey, which included feedback from students in grades 8-12, families, and staff.
Reviewing policies and practices from over 50 surrounding districts.
Exploring models that assessed the impact of various weighted GPA systems using current student data.
Examining college admissions practices, especially of highly attended colleges, to understand how they evaluate student transcripts.
Consulting with the MMSD Advanced Learning Department and representatives from each of our high schools to gather diverse perspectives and expertise.
The day before, Jankovich and Dr. Carlettra Stanford, Assistant Superintendent of Schools & Learning, sent a memo to the Madison Board of Education. The memo listed the same five basic points, with a clear recommendation nonetheless: “No Change to Current Policy”. The memo also said that “this decision aligns with MMSD’s commitment to promoting a culture of continuous learning, rather than a sole focus on point accumulation,...supports our existing core values of a well-rounded education and ensuring equitable access to challenging learning experiences for all students. Current district data indicate disproportionate access to college-level advanced courses, and implementing a weighted GPA could potentially exacerbate this issue, running counter to our non-negotiable equity principles.”
Board members left out of the loop
BOE members Nicki Vander Meulen and Martha Siravo told the State Journal shortly after the decision that the district had not been keeping them in the loop, “questions went unanswered for months”, and the first response was the memo sent one day before the decision, while the review process had been in progress for months. I sent an email to the district’s main contact address on August 22nd, and never received a response back through that channel. On August 29th, I contacted the school board, and was fortunate enough to hear back from Siravo, who has kept in touch since then, while the administration has not responded with any substance. She agreed that the “report” in the original explanation was insufficient, and some board members have been calling for a more public discussion for months to no avail. She wrote that “the memo is completely unhelpful, doesn’t give any specific data, and doesn’t lean into any existing data”. Siravo shared that she was still attempting to follow up with Cindy Green, the Assistant Superintendent of Teaching & Learning, from an email she sent months ago. I also reached out to Claire Li, the MMSD student representative on the board, on September 19th, but have not received a response.
Survey results suppressed
I’d like to briefly touch on each of the five points that MMSD referenced in their decision, starting with the 2025 Weighted Grades Survey. The original statement simply claimed that the district “analyzed” responses, but no survey results were shared. Generally, you’d think they’d want to share them if the results supported their decision. In my first message to the district, I inquired about whether topline, anonymous results could be shared, but got no response. I only got a half-answer from Dr. TJ McCray, the Deputy Superintendent, after Martha Siravo forwarded my message to Superintendent Gothard’s office. Dr. McCray said “we cannot share the specific topline response percentages publicly”. That was not true, as the State Journal published the results following a public records request. Unsurprisingly, the survey found that “70% of families and students polled say they want weighted grading”, so the first “reason” already contradicted the decision.
MMSD’s communication office responded to the release of the survey with three new supposed reasons for sticking with unweighted:
“Weighted GPAs would assign a higher value for some courses... prioritizing benefits to students in those courses.
“[We] are focused on improving proportionate student representation in advanced coursework, and weighted GPAs may work counter to that.
“Our… resources would be best directed to… advising students to pursue coursework aligned with their post-secondary goals and strengthening… systems of support.”
Let’s set aside the fact that the first “reason” is just defining how weighted GPAs work, which I’m glad the district understands. The second was also mentioned in the memo to the board, but without evidence explaining how weighted GPAs would harm representation. In a worst case scenario, proportionate or diverse representation in advanced coursework may not improve. In a best case scenario, it would improve because of weighted GPAs. If students are recognized for taking harder coursework, they are more likely to. There is no clear negative impact on participation, but there’d be a positive one. The third point simply doesn’t make sense. Weighting GPAs doesn’t require “efforts” beyond changing how Infinite Campus calculates GPAs. The district presents a false narrative of a “tradeoff” between advising and supporting students and switching to weighted with no evidence. Unless school counselors and support staff would be calculating GPAs by hand, this is another one-sentence “reason” with no explanation because there isn’t one.
A majority of districts DO have weighted GPAs
The district also cited a review of “policies and practices from over 50 surrounding districts”, but once again refused to provide specifics, and Dr. McCray gave me a misleading response. He wrote that “very few districts, with the exception of Middleton Cross Plains, have adopted weighted GPA systems in response to Act 95. Many districts, like MMSD, have chosen to keep unweighted GPAs to preserve a consistent and equitable approach across all schools.” McCray’s claim that few districts have adopted weighted systems recently may be true, but district officials later told Channel 3’s Arman Rahman that of 56 surrounding districts, a majority, 29, did weight grades, vs 26 that did not.
That article was released alongside a TV interview of Langston Evans, MMSD’s director of college and career readiness. Evans revealed that that the survey “had a small response rate” and “those who did respond were more in favor of moving to a weighted GPA system”, and he claimed that “[students] would be better prepared [by] selecting courses based on their interests,... abilities, and… rigor that they wanted, which is a better story and… trajectory for admissions advisors and counselors.” That statement doesn’t make sense as weighted GPAs don’t force any particular course selections.
Data requests ignored
The district claims it explored “models that assessed the impact of various weighted GPA systems using current student data”. Again, it did not provide any details in the original decision, and Dr. McCray said that “the analysis revealed that a shift to a weighted GPA system could introduce new disparities or complexities that unintentionally disadvantage some students, contradicting our commitment to providing equitable academic opportunities”. This is equally as vague as the other “explanations”, and dismisses the fact that, weighted or unweighted, there will be students who are disadvantaged with the Guarantee. In the status quo, students who take harder coursework are, because there is zero wiggle-room or recognition. Personally, I’d rather give the students who had a more rigorous high school career the advantage. There are indeed disparities, and the composition of advanced courses is not representative of the MMSD population, which I believe we should correct. But this doesn’t solve the problem, nor does weighting GPAs make it worse. Rather, this is an attempt by the district to conceal it instead of putting any attention into the root causes of the disparities, which often start with earlier childhood education, or attempting to promote advanced courses, rather than just offer them. The district has not provided any plan to address these disparities long-term.
I submitted a formal public records request for these models on September 11th. MMSD indicated that the request was received on the 12th. As of writing, they have not responded within the Wisconsin DOJ’s 10-working-day guideline, and have repeatedly stated that “due to the number of public records requests received, we are experiencing a delay in our responses”.
With the fourth point, the district said they examined “college admissions practices, especially of highly attended colleges, to understand how they evaluate student transcripts”. Colleges have their own individual systems for weighting grades or evaluating rigor, but MMSD ignores that no such process exists in the Wisconsin Guarantee. The only way that can be fixed is if MMSD makes that process themselves.
As far as the final point about consulting with various employees, the only real way of measuring support from staff is the survey, where it was about 50-50. There are no statements on how weighted would have negative effects on various student populations, or explanations from staff who had input.
Where We Go From Here
This issue won’t fade, nor should it. MMSD hopes to repeat its playbook from the Honors sunsetting debate - talk without action. But survey results, peer-district comparisons, and fairness under Act 95 all indicate that weighted GPAs are better aligned with MMSD’s own values.
MMSD has failed to meet the own transparency standards it claims to uphold. The school board should demand a public, data-driven review before reaffirming current policy. Until MMSD provides evidence or real explaining for its choice, “transparency” remains a phrase used to conceal its absence.